Six-month suspension for S-W school board member

Delbury’s term will end by suspension’s completion, By Tom Hoffman The New Jersey Commissioner of Education has suspended Raymond Delbury from the Sussex-Wantage Regional School Board for six months. Delbury’s term ends this year. School board elections are April. Delbury deferred comments on the situation to his attorney, Donald Hogan of Newton. When reached by phone this week, Hogan said that Delbury plans to appeal the commissioner’s decision. Hogan said he’s currently researching the procedural requirements for filing an appeal on Delbury’s behalf. The decision to suspend Delbury was made Jan. 9, after the state’s School Ethics Commission ruled in November that he had violated the state’s School Ethics Act when he posted confidential medical information about an employee of The Wantage School on a Web site in October 2007. The ethics commission suggested in its ruling that Delbury be suspended from the S-W school board for six months. The decision to suspend Delbury was made by New Jersey Commissioner of Education Lucille E. Davy, according to Thomas Card, president of the Sussex-Wantage Regional School Board. Even if the S-W school board wanted to act on Delbury’s school board status, it would be powerless to do so, said Card. Former S-W Board President Arthur Jacobs, who is still a member of the board, filed a complaint to the state about Delbury’s actions in October 2007. According to information posted on the state school ethics commission’s Web site, Delbury was found to have posted confidential medical information in October 2007 about an employee of The Wantage School on NJ.com while disclosing that the employee had been hospitalized. Delbury has told the Advertiser-News last week that three of his five children are home-schooled, a fourth attends Veritas Christian Academy and another Philadelphia Biblical University. Not the first time This is the second time that Delbury has been found to have violated the School Ethics Act. The commission determined that Delbury violated the School Ethics Act in 2006 “when he went into the (Sussex Middle) school and took pictures of open windows in the middle school and maxi-pads in the board bathroom and then spoke with reporters regarding his concerns giving reporters copies of the pictures.” The commission also found that Delbury had further violated the School Ethics Act during that incident “when he treated teachers and other education professionals in a demeaning and harassing manner and contacted teachers and administrators directly without going through the superintendent.” Delbury was later censured by the New Jersey Commissioner of Education for his actions.